I suffered more agonies than even the cruellest and most savage are doomed to endure forever. Murderers, mutilators, cannibals, blasphemers, freemasons, physicians, lawyers, bankers, and sodomists! You who have gone to hell and are destined to go! You will know little of real pain in that place! The tortures of the damned dead pale beside the tortures of the innocents who must live in the hell of the totally paralyzed!
I, Herr Professor Doktor Krempe, twice dead though not really dead, am come back from two tombs, to write this! Yet, it is not my hand that moves the pen!
I owe all of my second hell to my student in natural philosophy, the ever-egregious, hubris-swollen, and morally unprincipled Victor Frankenstein. I knew what his private opinion of me was because another student reported it to me. Frankenstein, that smug, self-centered, self-righteous, utterly irresponsible, and totally spoiled infant in a man's body, that overbearing and utterly snotty student, said that I was short and squat and the repulsiveness of my hoarse voice was only exceeded by that of my face. Also, he told my informer that only the mercy of God kept my stupidity from being fatal to me. So enraged was I on hearing this from my informant on that dismal October evening that I ignored the cold and driving rain and the perils of the ravening night skies to venture forth on foot to confront the slanderous scoundrel in his own quarters. And I was struck down by a lightning bolt en route to Frankenstein's quarters to confront him. Is there Justice? Is there a God Who believes in Justice?
Later, I was able to revenge myself upon him, though it was done through a very strange vicar, satisfyingly savage. What was not satisfying, I must admit, was my revenge. OUR revenge, I should say, and you will soon know what I mean by OUR! Nothing that could be done to Frankenstein on Earth or in hell would transform the fire in my bosom to sweetness and light, for which seemingly un-Christian statement I am fully justified.
Yet, according to the word of God as printed in the Holy Bible, I must forgive even my worst enemy. Otherwise, I go to hell, too. Is it worth it? I ponder this question often. My chief thoughts revolve around one possible solution to my dilemma. Did Frankenstein commit an unforgivable sin? The particular sin he committed is certainly not listed in the Holy Book. That unique offense against God, I suppose, would also make his sin an original sin. Thus, there are two more grave questions to concern the theologians, and God knows they have enough now that they cannot answer. Are there two unforgivable sins? Are there two original sins?
Unfortunately, or fortunately, they will not have to concern themselves with these matters. No one will ever know about the pair of double sins unless this account gets to a civilized nation. Or unless somebody else writes a book about the monstrous Frankenstein and his monstrous creation. That seems very unlikely. And it would, if it were written, probably be printed as a romantic novel, a fiction. Who among the unenlightened public, the ignorant masses, would believe it if it were presented as fact? For that matter, what learned man would put credence in it?
The day came that I died. That is, the purulent frauds attending me declared me dead. You can imagine, though the mental picture must be only a shadow of the real horror, how I felt! I strove to protest, to cry out aloud that I was still alive! I struggled so violently within myself, though in vain, that it was a wonder I did not have a genuine stroke! I was taken to the undertakers for the washing of my body, dressing me in my best suit, and obscene joking about the size of my genitals. I did manage, finally, to flutter my eyelids. Those drunken incompetents never noticed! Afterwards, while lying in state and listening to the comments about me from those hypocrites, my wife and relatives, I fought once more to blink. But, this time, I failed.
Fortunately for me, the practice among the English wealthy of embalming the body had not become as yet popular in Ingolstadt. Even if it had, my wife would not have permitted it because of the expense. As a result, I lived, though I can truly say that I wished it had been otherwise. I dehydrated, of course, while lying in state, two states, in fact. The other was the state of hell on Earth.
My dear colleague, put it in your will that a knife be driven into your heart before you are buried! Make sure that you are indeed dead before being buried!
The funeral was held—no doubt, you were there—and then the coffin was closed. Immediately thereafter, I was placed in the tomb. I expected to die quickly though horribly when the air in my coffin was used up. But
my very shallow breathing made the oxygen last longer. Then, just as I was about to perish, the coffin lid was raised.
You must have already guessed, from my previous remarks, whose face I saw by the light of the torch in his hand. Young Victor Frankenstein, of course!
With him were two scroungy and scurvy fellows he had hired to assist him. They lifted me from the coffin and wrapped me in an oiled cloth enclosing ice chunks and put me in a wagon. In bright daylight! But my tomb was in a remote section of the cemetery, and he was in a desperate haste.
When the cloth was unrolled, I found myself in a filthy and cluttered room. His quarters off campus, I assumed. It looked like the typical degenerate student's room except for the great quantity of expensive scientific equipment. The usual stench of unwashed body and unemptied chamber pot was overriden by the odor of decaying flesh. I cannot go into detail about what followed because of the limited supply of paper and the increasingly wretched penmanship of the creature who is writing this. His hands are getting colder and colder, so I must not indulge myself any more. I must compress this incredible narrative as much as possible.
To be brief, Frankenstein dared to believe that he could make an artificial man out of dead bone and tissue and give the assemblage life! He would do a second time what God had done first! Man, the created, would become a creator! His creature was not visible since it was in a wooden box packed with ice and some preservative that he had discovered through his chemical researches.
I had believed and still believe that this scion of an aristocratic family was the acme of arrogance, stupidity, and selfishness. But God, for some unknown reason, had endowed this detestable being with the genius of Satan. The youth knew what he was doing or he blundered into success, probably the latter. Yes, success!
He placed me in a box filled with ice, sprayed me with some substance I cannot identify, and then proceeded to saw my skull open. I fainted from the horror and the pain, though the cutting was not as painful as I had anticipated.
What happened when I began bleeding, I do not know. I can only surmise that he knew then that I was still living. But, instead of making efforts to revive me, he continued his blasphemous and murderous work. I had known that he despised me, but I had not fathomed the depths of both his hatred of me and his relentless and conscienceless pursuit of a goal only a madman would desire or attempt to achieve.
I awoke late at night. The lightning stroke which he had drawn down from the storm clouds by means of a rod had revivified the body in which I found myself. Its body lived, and so did its brain.
However, that brain was mine!
How that fool of an inexperienced student had managed to connect the encephalic nerves to the others is beyond me. I would not have attempted it despite my deep knowledge of anatomy.
Though I am well-known for my mastery of language, I do not have the words to describe the sensations of being only a brain installed in vitro in an alien body. And what a body! As I was to discover later, it was eight feet in stature and was a disparate assemblage of human and animal parts. As the workmen say, built from scratch.
Of course, I did not know at the moment of awakening that I was not in my own fleshly shell. But it did not take me long to realize the true state of location when the monster lifted my hands. MY hands! They were a giant's, yet they had to be mine! Slowly and clumsily, I rose from the huge table on which I—no, not I, he—had been placed before Frankenstein pulled down the blazing vital fluid from the sky. I was aware not only of my own sensations but of the creature's. This was very confusing and continued to be so for some time
before I was able to adapt myself to the unnatural situation.
I said that his sensations were also mine. His thoughts, feeble and chaotic though they were in their beginning, were perceived by me. Integrated by me would be a better description. And, perhaps, I should not describe the thoughts as such. The monster had no language, thus, no words with which to think. He did have the power of using mental icons —I suppose even a dog has that—and his emotions were quite humanlike. But he had no store of images in his brain, which was a veritable tabula rasa. Everything that he first saw, smelled, touched, and heard was new to him and impossible for him to interpret. Even the first time he experienced bowel rumblings, he was astonished and frightened, and, if you will pardon the indelicacy, his morning erections disturbed him almost as much as they disturbed me.
How am I to express comprehensibly the relationship of his brain to mine? In the first place, why should his brain be a blank tablet when he was brought to life? (It was, in reality, my brain, but I shall henceforth refer to that portion of my brain used by him as being his own brain.) His own brain should, on revivification, have contained all that it possessed before I died. It did not. Something, shock or some unknown biological or even spiritual mechanism wiped it clean. Or pushed the contents so deep that the creature had no access to them.
If part of the brain was scoured clean, why did a part remain untouched? Why was my consciousness pushed into a corner or, as it were, under the cerebrumic rug? I have no explanation for this phenomenon. The process of creation should not have been like God creating Adam but like God bringing Adam back to life after his longevity of nine hundred and thirty years. Adam would have remembered the events of his stay on Earth.
Our mental connection was, however, a one-way route. I was aware of all he felt and thought. He was totally unaware that a part of him was not he. I could not communicate with him, strive though I did to send some sort of mental semaphore signal to him. I was a passenger in a carriage the driver of which knew nothing of horses or the road he was on or why he was holding the reins. Unlike the passenger in this example, who could at least jump out of the vehicle, I could do nothing about my plight. I was even more helpless and frustrated than when I had been paralyzed by the first stroke of lightning. I was also more frightened and despairing than when in that "coma." That was a natural and not unheard-of situation. This was unnatural and unique.
I saw through the monster's eyes. (These, by the way, were longsighted. Frankenstein had botched the selection of the visual orbs just as he botched everything else, though he desired to make a perfect human being. Why, in the name of God and all His angels, did Frankenstein build an eight-foot high man? Was that his idea of a being who would not stand out in a crowd?)
As I said, I saw through the eyes of this blasphemy in flesh. Though they needed glasses for reading, their deficiencies were not responsible for the peculiarity of my visual acuity. I saw as if I were peering through the big end of a telescope. What the creature saw as normal-sized, I assume, I saw as if reduced in size. At the same time, the images I received were as if the large end of the telescope were dipped just below the surface of a pond of clear water. The intersection of instrument and fluid made for a peculiar and somewhat blurry picture.
This distortion extended to my hearing also. Thus, the construction of the eyes was not the cause of this irritating phenomenon. It must have been the construction of the brain or, perhaps, a faulty connection between him and me that interfered with proper reception by me. Or perhaps that was the manner in which the creature saw and heard.
Great God! How I do run on! I know that both my time and the quantity of paper are limited. One may give out before the other does. Yet I, always noted for the clarity, conciseness, and absolute relevancy to the subject of my lectures to the benighted, apathetic, and thick-headed students of our university, am as silly and talkative as any one of the hundred passengers on Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools. Forgive me. I have so many statements to make so that you will understand the story of Frankenstein, his monster, and myself.
Just now, the monster, despite my mental urgings, faltered in his copying of my mental dictation. It is not the cold in this shack which contributes to his weakness. It is the frigid finger of death touching him and, hence, me. I must hurry, must compress. However, as you must realize, you would not be reading this if I had not been successful in reactivating him into continuing the task I have set him without his knowing what he is doing or the reason for it.
He is falling apart, literally. It is my belief that he would have done so much sooner if Frankenstein, that unhappy combination of fool and genius, had not injected some chemical in him to prevent his organs, collected from different individuals and even different species, from reacting poisonously upon each other. The chemicals used to effect this have, however, dissipated their strength.
Yesterday, his right ear fell off. The day before, his left leg swelled up and is turning black. A week ago, he vomited all the polar bear meat and seal blubber that have been his—our—main ingredients of diet. He has been unable to keep much down since then. Most of his teeth are rotting.
Let us hope that I can keep pushing him until he hands over this letter to the messenger.
That hopelessly irresponsible Frankenstein was so horrified when his creation became alive that he ran away, leaving the monster, innocent as a baby and as full of potential good—and evil—as an infant, to his own devices.
I could do nothing but go along with the monster in his pathetic efforts to understand the world into which he had been involuntarily thrust. All of us, of course, had no say about our entering this harsh and indifferent universe. But most babies have someone to take care of their needs, to love them, and to educate them. This creature was, of all mankind, and it was human despite the doubts of itself and its maker, the most forlorn infant of all. Though I at first loathed him, I came to sympathize with him, indeed, to identify with him. Why not? Is not he myself, and is not myself he?
Onward more swiftly. As the end of his—our—lifespan approaches, so must the end of this letter be hastened.
No time for details, no matter how much they demand to be illuminated and explained.
The creature fled from Ingolstadt to the mountain forests nearby. He learned much about himself and the world and the people in this area. He longed for acceptance and love. He did not get either. He learned how to make and use fire. He approached a village in peace and was injured by the stones cast at him. He took refuge in an unused part of a cottage and spied upon the occupants, once-wealthy French aristocrats exiled and now living in poverty.
His eavesdropping enabled him to learn how to speak French. Part of that was my doing. I had by then managed to send him some messages of which he was not conscious. These were not commands which he obeyed or anything making him conscious of my presence, but the information stored in my brain, which included an excellent knowledge of French, oozed through to him.
(Incidentally, I discovered the most intimate details of the electrical, chemical, and neural constructions and functions of the human brain. Alas! No time to impart this stupendously vital information which would propel our knowledge of the brain to the high stage which I imagine the citizens of the twentieth century will enjoy. But I cannot resist informing you that the treelike organization of the nerves is a delight to the explorer. My travels up and down its trunks, branches, and twigs were the only joy I have had during my incarceration in the monster's body. I was, in a sense, a great ape swinging from branch to branch in the orderly jungle of the neural system, learning as I traveled. I discovered that the splanchnic nerve is actually three nerves and all control the visceral functions in various manners. I call them the Great, the Lesser, and the Least. I especially loved the Least Splanchnic Nerve, a modest, unassuming, and yet somewhat cheeky transmitter with unexpected aftereffects, a rosy glow, in fact.)
The creature—it has never had a name, a lack which has greatly depressed its self-esteem but he
ightened its fury and its lust for revenge: you have no idea what being nameless does to a human being—finally revealed himself to the occupants of the cottage. He expected compassion; he got repulsion and horror. The occupants fled. He burned down the cottage and then wandered aimlessly around. He rescued a girl from drowning and was wounded by a gun for his heroic deed. This ingratitude intensified his hurt and rage, of course. Then he came to Geneva, Frankenstein's native city.
Here he murdered Victor's brother, the child William. While he was doing this, I screamed at him, if a voiceless being can be said to scream.
No use. The monster's hands—my hands—choked the life out of the infant.
The man-made thing encountered his maker and got him to promise to make a female for him. Victor went to the Orkney Islands and did as promised. But, disgusted, suffering from Weltschmerz—with which the monster was also afflicted—Victor destroyed the female, which was as huge and ugly as her male counterpart.
Oh, the catalog of horrors! The ravening creature murdered Henry Clerval, Victor's best friend. He raped and murdered Victor's bride on their wedding night. After that hideous deed, he declared that evil would henceforth become his good. He was sincere when he said that. But the words were not his in origin even if they were his in spirit. They were a paraphrase of Satan's defiant statement in Milton's Paradise Lost. "Evil, be thou my good."
Yes, the monster had read that noble work. It contains, as you know, some of the greatest lines in poetry. However, there are boring passages which stretch their dryness to an intolerable length. The reader feels as if he were a parched traveller lost in a Sahara of iambic pentameter.
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